It’s a matter of imagination, I think
It’s strange to live in a place where a commonplace personal device can—through invisible means—can give you access to knowledge, entertainment, and real-time communication with almost anyone else in the world. This device has a display that can effortless create text as readily as picture or video. It can make music. It can interface with similar devices whose scope and power are many factors of magnitude greater than its own so seamlessly, that you’d never know it wasn’t happening inside of a thing about the size of a deck of cards.
This deck of cards thing is a cell phone. Obviously. Right? A cell phone is 100% s predicated on electricity, which became nationally available roughly 100 years ago. Thanks to electricity we’ve created so many miracle devices that they’ve become commonplace. It’s made boxes to cook our food in minutes possible. We have boxes that clean our dishes or wash our clothes for us. Boxes that keep our ingredients fresh. We have boxes (more tubes, actually) that can take us halfway across the world in less than a day. All of these things predicated on a system that has not been available for around 60% of our nation’s history.
And we’re a young country. In comparison to China’s rough age of 4,000 years, it’s 2.5%. In comparison to the recorded history of the Jewish people’s 5,784 years, electricity has been commonplace (in America) for only 1.7% of it.
So, it’s an issue of imagination.
We think it’s more reasonable that we’ll implant tiny computers into our brains before we are able to provide healthcare to everyone. Heal the national reality divide and learn how to have productive discussions about politics again. Solve poverty. Foodlessness. Homelessness. By the way, we currently produce enough food to feed the country over. We have more empty houses than we have people needing them. It’s not like the resources aren’t right in front of us. Why is it so hard?
How in a time of the greatest wonders is our imagination the thinnest?
This is a rhetorical question. There isn’t one clear cut answer. It’s neither fair nor helpful to reduce nuanced, generational narratives driven as much by scheming and plotting as by happenstance into a single one-size fits all narrative.
But that doesn’t mean that I’m not entitled to try. If you can listen readily, you may speak as boldly as you’d like. If you promise to try to learn and grow, you can be ignorant for as long as it takes. If you can apologize easily, then you never have to be truly wrong.
So here were go! The thing that touches every bit of our society, that might not explain how we got here, but most certainly explains why we are all still struggling is this: grass and mowing.
Here in America we have dedicated huge amounts of space towards grass to cut. This is in front of our houses, in-between roads and highways. Outside of business parks and next to parking spaces. We’ve even introduced these grasses to places where they don’t belong. Where they don’t want to grow. It’s so ubiquitous it’s invisible. It’s also literally invisible. There’s nothing to see. Go take a look out your window.
Did you know that lawns account for roughly a fifth of our national water usage?
Time spent mowing, money spent on water & gasoline, chemicals & fertilizer. All for nothing. Literally nothing. Where did our imaginations go? Pulled up and replaced with sod. Kept in check by our own time, energy, and money.
I went for a walk last June and saw someone picking fruit off a serviceberry tree. A native, and edible, shrub that is also a popular landscaping choice here in the NE. This was in Baltimore, Maryland and their front yard could not have been larger than your kitchen table.
After that, I started to imagine what it would be like if everyone who had a small patch of grass chose to put a fruiting shrub in the middle of it. I started to imagine if they replaced their last bit of grass with a groundcover of edible plants. My two favorites are chives and beebalm. I believe that if they did that, the average person would spend significantly less time and money on yard maintenance overall.
I like to think that they would enjoy eating berries every June until their tongue was stained purple. I like to think that they would get excited by having fresh herbs available most of the year. Did you know that chive blossoms are as delicious as they are beautiful? Did you know that you can make iced tea with beebalm’s distinctive flowers? Did you know that these are only a few of the things you can do with these plants?
I want to believe that when people start seeing the potential in the spaces that already exist all around them; the same spaces that already provide food, toilet paper, and countertops; the same spaces that freshen the air and clean the water. I want to believe that when people stare at their front yard; dreaming all the berries they’ll eat, the teas they’ll make, the spice blends they can readily grab by the handful… I want to believe that when that happens the dreaming of that better world won’t actually be so much of a dream.
I pray the next steps towards truth, justice, and reconciliation might come easier than this one. Then the ones that we have already taken. Love and respect and grace to those who came before us. To those who are living their truths now. I pray that people might not have to give their everything again and again over values that we all purport to share.
Maybe we could take that next step together over a cup of beebalm tea?
April 2024, first draft